


dig your own grave

by virginianwolfsnake



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Gen, mentions of blood though nothing graphic, my attempt to fill in the gap of why the duchess wrote such a weird letter in TUA, olaf is awful, timelines? What timelines?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virginianwolfsnake/pseuds/virginianwolfsnake
Summary: winnipeg is going to burn, but the duchess makes every effort not to.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	dig your own grave

Shaken awake in the middle of the night, feeling almost like someone might be intending to grab her by the other ankle, she has hurt herself in the struggle to get away. It is much more terrifying to be dragged from your sleep by a mysterious stranger as a grown woman, it turns out, than as an infant — and she has smashed a heavy lamp in her attempt to hit her assailant with it, done some terrible damage to her mother’s treasured cabinet with a misplaced kick, and screamed herself almost hoarse. 

She doesn’t remember realising that it was him for a long time, not before she had managed to escape into the hall and throw herself at the staircase, legs trembling but carrying her unsteadily downward. It was only when he caught up that she managed to look at him fully, and felt a strange concoction of relief, terror and disgust, all mixed together and indiscernible. The relief was surely misplaced, but he somehow still had something of the look of the boy a few years ahead of her at Wade, who she had later laughed at during their summers of training. 

In that way, it is difficult to be scared of him. It has been so long since she last saw him and his features are still there even as eroded as they are becoming, as though the weight of his hatred is taking a toll on his very bones. He looks so tired, as tired as she feels. But she thinks of Monty —  _ poor _ Monty — and wonders if he might have felt the same way. It is easier to feel scared of the blade in his hands, the one that he taps against her throat, the one she cannot believe he would truly use in the way he threatens. 

He has been the one complaining for most of the time since she has been awake, as though he is the one who has been ambushed and threatened in the middle of the night. As she is still trying to find her bearings with her heart hammering in her ears and a throb of pain in her foot, perhaps from the cabinet, and the strangest scent in the air ( _ is it in her mind? _ ) he is telling her that she has nearly deafened him with her screaming and that his knee will be sore for weeks, as if she is meant to feel sorry for any of that. 

He has been asking after  _ Snicket _ at an alarming rate, at what feels like every single step they take. She truly wishes she did know how to find him, her closest friend in the world, rather than just receive scrawled notes from him every once in a while. Not, of course, that she would be willing to share that location, but she is without that choice anyway. All she knows of Lemony is that he is alive, or at least he was when he sent her his last note. 

Once he is either convinced of that, or has given up on the interrogation, he manages to sit her down in her father's old leather chair, looping something plastic around one ankle and pulling it taught. He is behind the chair — not willing to risk another kick, perhaps — so he escapes serious injury when she flails to get away like a fox in a trap. 

“Stop!” he barks from over her shoulder, and the blade is flush against her this time and that is the only thing that makes her go still. “That’s your last warning.”

Tying her other ankle is difficult for him with one hand at her throat, and as soon as she feels his arm loosen from her shoulder her hands fly up to grab at his to disarm him. He manages to pull free of her without cutting either of them, though it is a close call.

“You are the worst hostage I have ever met,” he huffs, as if there have been so many. “I’m going to untie them again later. If you will just stop  _ panicking _ — ”

“Am I a hostage?” she breathlessly demands. 

“Well — sort of,” he falters. “You’ll see; it’s the same idea.”

He says this with a sort of excited little twitch to his hands, as if he thinks she might be impressed by his genius when he tells her the plan, even as the victim of it. 

“I won’t run,” she negotiates. “I’ll just sit here.”

This, of course, is a blatant lie. She does not expect it to work, and indeed it only makes her captor laugh. He used to laugh so much — he was perhaps the least melancholy and tortured of all of them, despite his dramatic tendencies. Perhaps he still does, but the sound is very different now; a terrible crackling wheeze, wrenched from his lungs rather than formed naturally, and she feels the disgusting heat of his breath over her shoulder. 

“Free-range volunteers!” he breathes incredulously. “I don’t think so. You’ve already done enough damage.”

It is at that moment, when he finally does manage to get a good enough grip to loop the cable tie together, her mind places the powerful strange scent, as if without the distraction of the potential to escape she finally has the space to think of the name. As clear as day, it is gasoline, and now that her subconscious has permitted her to name it, it also wants to remind her of its purpose. 

But Olaf is sitting in front of her now in a contradictory little ensemble of a stained shirt, worn thin on the sides, a fraying silk cravat and an awful snarl to his lips like a wolf who has caught the scent of blood somewhere over the hills, and talking endlessly, an unpleasant top layer of melody playing over the terrified orchestral backdrop of her own thoughts. As she thinks of the ruins of the Baudelaire mansion in the City, of the fact that the cable ties will eventually melt but that it will be too late by the time they do, or whether she will be physically strong enough to stand with the chair and use it to break the window, his voice drones out a separate story of how she will help him to find her closest friend and his current worst living enemy.

“Now,  _ your Grace _ ,” he begins, the title spilling like poison from his lips. “If you do as I say, I will untie you, and you will go about the rest of your life… reading, or writing poetry, or whatever it is your kind actually do these days.”

She swallows heavily. “But you will destroy the castle regardless.”

A theatrical shrug. “Well, that’s a given. The letter won’t make any sense otherwise.”

This is a nonsensical thing to say and what she can gather of his plan is more nonsensical still. Even she is not sure how she would go about returning an answer to a man she is certain does not have a fixed address — so unless he has already found Lemony, she doesn’t see how this will ever reach him. Besides even that, there is no rule that the Winnipeg castle must be destroyed to give it an impact. But perhaps this is just who he is now. Fire is all that he does. 

The castle is only a building at the end of the day, albeit one with her father's chair and her mother’s jewels and all of their portraits, and in her list of priorities, arguing to save it comes second to ensuring she does not burn along with it. 

Her mouth is very dry suddenly, but she still has to ask a final question. “And what of Lemony?”

The shape of the name on her lips makes his face twist into an ugly mask. “No need to think about that, Duchess,” he snarls, pulling together tidbits from her desk to slap them down in front of her — paper with the Winnipeg letterhead, her fountain pen, a thick envelope. 

He hovers over her shoulder while she writes, looming too close and peering intently at every mark she makes. She pauses only minutely, under the guise of adjusting the nib of the pen, as she considers which clues to include that he will not be able to spot. The jeep, the words as she keeps count on her fingers beneath the table, adjusting as she goes to the rhythm of eight rather than ten spaces, inventing an adjusted Sebald Code that she remembers referencing once, at a meeting she cannot even think whether Lemony actually attended. 

The one thing that gives her any comfort is that, if anyone could work it out, it will be him. Olaf has chosen to take issue with the most capable volunteer she can think of. 

Halfway through, struck by an idea, he reaches for the framed photographs on her desk and dismantles them piece by piece. At first she thinks he might be doing this only to upset her, but then he tells her to stop writing and starts to dictate parts he wants her to include which he feels will make it  _ authentic _ , including these photographs. She thinks of pointing out that his input will likely make it inauthentic, but she stands to gain nothing from that. Hopefully the combination of her attempt to create warning signals in the text and his own crass and hurtful additions will make Lemony so suspicious that, if this does ever end up in his hands, he will tear it to shreds immediately. 

He snatches the finished document up before she has even had a chance to lay down the pen and paces the study with it in hand, reading slowly. At one point, he lays the paper flat on the desk to follow with the tip of his index finger. R cannot entirely negate the jump of her pulse, the thrumming of the adrenaline that races through her every time he pauses, but she is a practiced enough liar not to flinch or avert her eyes, even when he pauses over a particular word and glares pointedly at her as if to trick her into revealing her own trick.

“Is it in code?”

She shakes her head and tries not to clench her jaw. “You were taught the codes. It is not.”

He looks very seriously back at her. “And you and Snicket haven’t made up one of your own?”

Her first response is physical: a flutter of her pulse, a treacherous voice in the back of her mind that insists  _ he knows, he knows, he’s found it _ , though she will not let that show on her face. Her second thought, strangely, is; what an idea that might have been, if they had ever had the time. And her third one is that it is so strange that he says Snicket now; a habit it must have taken him some time to learn. To call Jacques, Kit and Lemony simply  _ Snicket _ feels altogether wrong to her, and it must have once to him too. They are so much their own people, so dissimilar in many ways, that to combine them does not seem appropriate. It feels a desperate stab for the kind of detachment he wishes to portray for them all. How sad, really, to think of how hard he must work to forget those days. She won’t pity him, not here and now with her ankles fettered and her home doused in gasoline, but she has done so before, and she thinks, if he lets her go, that she will again. 

“How could I prove that to you?” She asks, careful to keep too much of a challenge from her voice — she says the words in as close to an even tone as she can muster in these circumstances. “ _ No _ . I promise.”

He rolls his eyes at that, shaking his head minutely as if she has just told quite an off-colour joke. Seemingly satisfied, though, he folds the letter in half and presses it into a sharp crease with one fingernail — she would never have done that to the paper, will Lemony know that at least, even if he misses the rest? — before handing it back to her to apply the Winnipeg seal. 

As the wax hardens, he seems to be suddenly finding some humour in this situation. “I don’t usually like the word  _ teamwork _ ,” he muses happily, fetching up the forged letter he is prepared to destroy so much to obtain and leaning against the desk in front of her, his face a picture of undisguised triumph. “But on this occasion it is quite applicable. You know,” he leans close to say this part, and she cannot resist turning her head rather than confront that horrible mouth and those shining eyes and that awful burnt leather scent. “You could renounce Snicket and the rest and come and work for me, Duchess, if you liked. I would agree as long as you asked politely.”

She is in no mood for silly games. R knows that he would never truly accept that, even in a reality where she would, and therefore to do as he suggests would achieve nothing for her and would only allow him the additional pleasure of seeing her lose the last bits of her pride. 

“I don’t think so,” she says, as he tucks the envelope into his breast poket, inside a nearby napkin. “Now, let me up.”

A pause follows that statement, where he so pointedly doesn’t move, and it makes her stomach churn.

“You must have known I wasn't really ever going to do that.”

She had suspected it, of course, but there is still a wild little part of her that doesn’t want to suspect these things of people she once trusted, even if never liked. A shiver of panic rolls along her spine, straightening her in her chair. With her hands free, she knows she will be able to untie her ankles if he will allow it. 

“You stand to gain nothing from that,” she says, as evenly as she can — but her lungs have compressed her breaths into little gasps now, as though they can already predict how they will fight against the smoke, and she finds the words coming from her in more of a rushed whisper. 

“I stand to lose from doing otherwise,” he points out. “The second I’m gone you’ll run off to Snicket and push him even further into hiding.”

“I don’t know where he is!” 

“So you said. But you surely understand why I am unwilling to take you volunteers at your word.”

She wonders if her heart is beating loudly enough for it to fill the ensuing silence as effectively for him as it does for her, or whether his own might be beating so violently at the same time, as they regard each other. Then, knowing that she only has the one chance at it, she lunges as much as her position will allow her for the letter opener — it is blunt, her mind supplies unhelpfully, but she has to simply hope it might be sharp enough to deter him and then to cut the ropes at her ankles. 

But, of course, unable as she is to do two things at once, and unable to stand or move, it isn’t long before he can grab hold of her wrists to stop her making any advances towards her ankles.

“That wasn’t very —  _ ow! _ ” She has twisted her hand this way and that so determinedly that she has broken his grip, and as it turns out the letter opener is more useful than she had imagined, because as her hand slips from his grip, the blade cuts across his palm and leaves a violent line of red in its wake. 

She hadn’t meant to hurt him, only to pull herself free. But she supposes he will see that as poetic. 

All trace of victory or delight is gone from his eyes now, and in the little ensuing scuffle she isn’t sure the point at which she loses grip on the letter opener. All she knows is that at the end he places the little makeshift weapon back onto the table and he manages to fasten the little plastic ties around her wrists and the arms of her father's favourite chair. By the time they are finished — it feels like hours, but it is probably only seconds — the cuffs of her white nightshirt are bloodied where he has pressed down on the cut on his palm. 

Her breath is shallower now than before, and there is a wild sort of swooping panic in her chest that spreads outward and paralyses parts of her at a time. She feels half-ready to scream, or sob, but what comes out of her mouth instead is a strange, detached little fact. 

“The letter won’t make any sense.”

He sighs. “What?”

“The letter,” she manages. “How have I written it? If I am in the fire, how?”

“He’ll never find that out, Ros. Now -”

“But,” she persists, searching for anything she can discern that will change his mind. “If I’m found? The newspapers?”

Olaf rolls his eyes and offers her a patronising kind of smile, though it looks more like a grimace. “He will trust the letter more than the newspaper. The newspapers are full of nonsense.”

“No, but -”

“ _ Enough! _ ” He barks. “I am not falling for any of this!”

She doesn’t want him to fall for it - he is not silly enough to untie her, especially after the interlude with the letter opener. She only hopes to give him time to look at her and engage with her, to remember who she is and to remember, in turn, who  _ he _ is. As much as she finds it difficult to recognise him now, she stares up at him in what she can only hope is a convincing facsimile of the way one old friend might look at another, even after years and betrayals and misunderstandings have passed between them in the meantime.

“Don’t do this,” she whispers, in those little strange gasps she can still make. 

“You all but lit the match yourselves,” he argues. “You and Lemony and the rest.”

“I understand —”

“No.”

“Don’t do this!”

That last plea resoundingly ignored, he gathers himself to his feet with the letter in his pocket and the book of matches in his hand. She is still talking, though she is no longer sure of what she is saying or whether he is listening. This is all wrong, she wants to say (perhaps that is what she is saying; she can no longer decipher it), and everything can be put back the way it was if they try hard enough, and nothing is worth this, surely. But, at the first flicker of the match after he strikes it, the words leave her altogether. Her arms wrench and twist, and she pulls as hard as she can at her binds until she is certain she has drawn blood but cannot feel it. 

As the embers burst to life, quicker than she was taught in school but slower than she’d like ( _ how slow is this going to be? _ ), he looks back and meets her eyes. In her panic, this is the moment her own alight on the surprisingly sharp letter opener on the desk where he left it, just in front of her, and her eyes dart for it before she has a chance to think that doing so will tip him off as to her intentions. Cursing herself, she looks back at him again and catches the moment he follows her eyeline down to the only thing that provides her with a sliver of hope. He looks, for a strangely long moment, and then he sniffs, wipes his hands on his thighs as though he can rid himself of this so easily, and disappears from the study. 

There will be time later to think about this lifeline, and whether he understood her intention, and whether, if he did, he couldn’t truly bear to snuff out that last little light of hope. For now, she only has enough time to think about one thing, and so she drags the chair forward in jerking motions so that she can wrap her lips around the handle, teeth on metal. If she plays her cards correctly, she will have time to think about it later. 

  
  



End file.
